Dirty forks… a foul smell.. litter on the carpets… overflowing trash cans in the bathroom .. salad-bar droppings on the floor.

Oh, yeah: And the food sucked, too.

Nichols’ rant — and I mean that in the most complimentary sense — reminded me of my years living in Houston in the 1990s, and the man who was, head and shoulders above all others, a journalistic institution there:

Marvin Zindler, Eyewitness News.

If you ever saw Zindler (right) on television, you know what I’m talking about.

If you didn’t, it’s nearly impossible to describe him. (My feeble attempt is after the jump. It’s the obituary I wrote after Zindler, the crusading consumer reporter for KTRK-TV (Channel 13), announced on the air that he had cancer. I spent a couple of weeks hanging around with him, trailing him on assignment, going to restaurants with him — we always had impeccable service — accompanying him on visits to his doctors. The obit sat in the can for years. He just wouldn’t die. Eventually, in 2007, age and illness caught up with him, and I made the front page the next day.)

If I might quote from myself:

Mr. Zindler defied conventional wisdom with his success in TV news. He didn’t begin his broadcasting career until 1973 at age 51. He wasn’t telegenic, learned or eloquent, reflective or dignified. He was, instead, as garish as a street hustler’s suit, as brassy as a half-lit Irishman on St. Patrick’s Day.

“When people first see me on television, they can’t believe it,” he once told an interviewer. “They think I’m some kind of clown.”

He wore blue tinted glasses and snowy pompadour wigs. He boasted of his 14 cosmetic surgeries, including four face-lifts, two nose jobs, an eye job and a chin implant. …

•

On air, he ranted and sputtered and banged on things. He mangled the language. Once, while live on camera, he collapsed into fits of laughter after several failed attempts to say, “Kawasaki.”

And his audience loved it. In 1973 when KTRK hired him, it was at the bottom of the ratings.

Soon the station became the dominant news voice of Houston, and most gave Mr. Zindler a large share of the credit.

“Marvin Zindler is more than a personality – he is a phenomenon,” said a viewership study done by a competing station in the 1970s. …

•

Mr. Zindler understood his appeal. “I’m not in journalism,” he liked to say. “I’m in show business.”…

•

At least three times, the compulsively fastidious Mr. Zindler got health authorities to shut down the coffee shop at his own station. There was, he explained, filth under the counter.

He was, perhaps alongside Mayor Bob Lanier, former President George H.W. Bush, and Hakeem Olajuwon of the Houston Rockets, the most famous figure in town.

His restaurant reports, broadcast on Friday evenings, were must-see TV. Drawn from reports by public health inspectors, they targeted Houston eateries that were found to have roaches in the flour, rat droppings in the pantry, scum on the soda nozzles.

But no restaurant report was complete until Zindler found at least one place — and, usually, several — with “SLIME IN THE ICE MACHINE.”

Watching this, after all these years, makes me miss him all over again.

MARVIN ZINDLER: 1921-2007

Colorful TV news reporter looked out for little guy

BRUCE TOMASO
July 30, 2007

Marvin Zindler, the flamboyant pioneer of TV consumer reporting whose crusade against a rural brothel inspired The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, died Sunday from complications of pancreatic cancer, Houston television station KTRK said. He was 85.

Mr. Zindler, the bellicose consumer crusader for Channel 13, announced his illness in a report from his hospital room this month.

A former sheriff’s deputy and the heir to a retailing fortune, he was one of the most widely recognized celebrities in Houston. And, at a reported $1 million a year, he was one of the highest-paid local broadcasters in America.

” Marvin was one of the most valued and beloved people in Houston. For nearly 35 years he was welcomed into the hearts and homes of millions of local viewers,” said Henry Florsheim, president and general manager of KTRK. “This is a deep loss for me, both personally and professionally. My prayers are with his family, friends and co-workers.”

He was still working for the station, despite his illness.

Mr. Zindler defied conventional wisdom with his success in TV news. He didn’t begin his broadcasting career until 1973 at age 51. He wasn’t telegenic, learned or eloquent, reflective or dignified. He was, instead, as garish as a street hustler’s suit, as brassy as a half-lit Irishman on St. Patrick’s Day.

“When people first see me on television, they can’t believe it,” he once told an interviewer. “They think I’m some kind of clown.”

He wore blue tinted glasses and snowy pompadour wigs. He boasted of his 14 cosmetic surgeries, including four face-lifts, two nose jobs, an eye job and a chin implant.

Mr. Zindler landed at KTRK, soon after being fired from the Harris County Sheriff’s Department. He wasted little time before making his mark by railing against “a bawdy house” near La Grange, Texas.

He said state Attorney General John Hill had seen reports from the Texas Department of Public Safety about the local sheriff allowing the “Chicken Ranch” brothel to operate.

Mr. Hill enlisted Mr. Zindler’s help and gave him the DPS investigative reports. Mr. Zindler followed through with a series of reports on the Chicken Ranch.

He showed the evidence to Gov. Dolph Briscoe on a Monday, and the brothel was closed by Thursday, but its legacy had just begun.

The TV reports made Mr. Zindler a household name statewide. His fame grew when a Playboy magazine story followed. The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas musical became a Broadway smash and brought Mr. Zindler national renown.

He liked the musical but hated the Burt Reynolds-Dolly Parton movie of the same name, in which Dom DeLuise played him, over the top.

After the Chicken Ranch established him, he used his “Action 13″ segment to right consumer wrongs. Eventually, he became so potent that targeted businesses usually would try to fix problems when they saw Mr. Zindler coming, rather than risk embarrassment.

On air, he ranted and sputtered and banged on things. He mangled the language. Once, while live on camera, he collapsed into fits of laughter after several failed attempts to say, “Kawasaki.”

And his audience loved it. In 1973 when KTRK hired him, it was at the bottom of the ratings.

Soon the station became the dominant news voice of Houston, and most gave Mr. Zindler a large share of the credit.

“Marvin Zindler is more than a personality – he is a phenomenon,” said a viewership study done by a competing station in the 1970s.

“Viewers despise him and adore him, scoff at him and respect him. They are irritated by him and entertained by him. But whatever the case, they are fascinated by him.”

Mr. Zindler understood his appeal. “I’m not in journalism,” he liked to say. “I’m in show business.”

For more than three decades on the air, Mr. Zindler cast himself as the last, best friend of the otherwise powerless little guy. Pulling story ideas from the 1,500 letters he got each week, he produced short, bombastic pieces taking on repair shops that cheated old ladies, mail-order houses that sent out schlock, motels caught reusing old coffee grounds, florists who delivered wilted blooms, veterinarians who mistakenly spayed the wrong Tabby or Fido.

Locally, Mr. Zindler became best known for his Friday “rat and roach report,” fingering eateries cited by the city for health violations. A rant about “mouse droppings on the countertop” or “sliiiiime in the ice machine” could break a restaurant.

“Most of the Zindler ‘pieces’ are non-stories by conventional news standards,” wrote Kent Demaret in a 1976 biography. “Therein lies much of the attraction: sooner or later the viewer can identify personally with someone else’s dilemma telecast by Zindler.”

At least three times, the compulsively fastidious Mr. Zindler got health authorities to shut down the coffee shop at his own station. There was, he explained, filth under the counter.

Not all of his stories were trivial. In 1985, Mr. Zindler exposed financial irregularities in the management of the Herman Hospital Estate, a multimillion-dollar charitable foundation.

He also was known for his work with medical charities, KTRK said. He traveled around the world with a team of Houston-based doctors aiding heart surgery and eventually helped build Russia’s second largest heart institute.

The team also specialized in reconstructive plastic surgery for children, according to the station.

Few who knew Mr. Zindler would have been surprised. From childhood, he exhibited a fiercely independent spirit, an uncontainable ego and an inclination toward contrarian behavior.

He was born in 1921, the middle son of five. His father, Abe Zindler, was a stern, driven haberdasher of Austrian descent who amassed a fortune in retailing before becoming mayor of Bellaire, a wealthy community that borders Houston. When he died, in 1963, his sons inherited an estate valued at $4.5 million.

The elder Mr. Zindler, described by Mr. Demaret as a “cold, often angry father,” wanted his sons to succeed him in the family business. But Marvin despised the slow pace of retailing and rebelled.

Their battles were loud, and legendary.

Despite an obvious intelligence, Mr. Zindler was a poor student and a discipline problem.

Fascinated with law enforcement, he sometimes rode on patrol with the Bellaire police chief, a friend of his father’s. When World War II left the Houston Police Department short of personnel, he became a volunteer patrolman. His own service in the Marines was cut short by recurrent foot problems.

In the following years, Mr. Zindler worked as a radio announcer, a television cameraman and a photographer for the now-defunct Houston Press. In each of those jobs, he specialized in lurid, live-from-the-scene crime reporting.

At accident scenes, wrote his biographer, “he would rush into the debris of wreckage, cursing his heavy recording equipment, to ask an impaled victim wriggling in his own blood, ‘How do you feel? Do you think you’re gonna die?’ ”

As a roving crime reporter, Mr. Zindler spent countless hours hanging around police officers, and theirs was a scene that increasingly intrigued him. In 1962, he traded his press card for a badge, joining the Harris County sheriff’s office.

In 1971, he persuaded Sheriff Buster Kern and District Attorney Carol Vance to start what was then one of the nation’s first consumer fraud divisions. Mr. Zindler, by then a sergeant, was placed in charge.

His zeal in investigating residents’ complaints, his flair for grand gestures and his contacts in the media made him an instant star. Sgt. Zindler, it seemed, was everywhere, rounding up merchants who ran misleading ads, gas-station owners whose pumps weren’t accurate, landlords who tried to shaft tenants, employers who withheld back pay from workers – and always, it seemed, with the TV cameras conveniently rolling as he paraded the scoundrels by.

After Sheriff Kern lost the 1972 election, his successor made it clear that he had no use for the headline-grabbing consumer champion and let Sgt. Zindler go.

At the time, Channel 13 was deciding whether to hire a consumer-affairs reporter, as Channel 2, then the dominant local station, had just done.

“The answer came like a bolt out of the blue,” recalled Dave Ward, Channel 13′s longtime anchor. Why not Marvin Zindler?

“No doubt about it,” Mr. Ward would later say. “We created a monster.”

Mr. Zindler became an instant hit. His fire-and-brimstone demeanor – exemplified by his signature sign-off, “MAAAAARRRvin ZINDler, EYEwitness News” – was unlike anything viewers had seen, before or since.

When he announced his cancer he had a message for fans: “I don’t want anyone feeling sorry for me because I am almost 86 years old, next month in August. Most people are dead when they are 65 or 70, and I am lucky to be alive at 86.”

Mr. Zindler is survived by his wife, Niki, five children, nine grandchildren and a great-grandchild. Funeral arrangements have not been completed.

Staff Writer Jon Nielsen and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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